by Ian Kershaw
Stalin drew one conclusion from all this. There was no option: conflict with Germany must at all costs be delayed until 1942 at the earliest. ‘We all, Stalin included, knew that conflict was inevitable,’ Mikoyan recalled, ‘but we were also aware of our lack of preparations for it.’97 Stalin later told Churchill that he knew the war was coming, but thought he might gain another six months or so.98 This meant a policy of mollifying Germany and avoiding confrontation, offering not the slightest provocation for German aggression. None of Stalin’s closest associates differed from this analysis. They held to it even as the indications mounted that Hitler was preparing to attack in 1941. Stalin viewed such signs with equanimity. He thought he could read Hitler’s mind. Hitler was not stupid, he thought. He would not risk a war on two fronts. He would first want to cover his rear in the west. The British were proving tenacious, and German victory on the western front did not seem imminent. If the Germans did not attack in the summer of 1941, the ferocious Russian winter would see to it that they could not do so before the following spring. So Stalin was confident he could fend off Hitler until 1942. By then, the Red Army would be ready for him.
V
Meanwhile, with military options foreclosed, everything possible had to be done on the diplomatic front. Here, the first months of 1941 brought only partial success. On the gains side was a joint declaration of neutrality signed with Turkey in March. This headed off the danger of Turkey joining the Tripartite Pact and reduced the threat to the Soviet Union on her southern flank, where the Turkish Straits had traditionally proved a vulnerable point of Russian defences.99 More important still was the neutrality pact signed with Japan in April which left Stalin euphoric at this major improvement to the security of the Soviet eastern front, eliminating–or at least greatly reducing–the prospect of the USSR being attacked from the east as well as the west. On the debit side, hopes of keeping Bulgaria–traditionally well disposed towards Russia and of strategic importance to Soviet security in the Balkans–out of the clutches of the Germans had failed by the end of February, when Sofia agreed to join the Tripartite Pact and allow German troops to be stationed on Bulgarian soil. By early April, rapid moves to forge a treaty of alliance with Yugoslavia, where a popular coup had overthrown the government which had decided to join the Axis, had been immediately vitiated by the German invasion and subsequent rapid conquest of the country. The capitulation of Greece, too, to Hitler’s forces meant that by the end of April, aside from Turkish neutrality, the Balkans were now squarely in the German domain and the southern frontier of the Soviet Union exposed to Germany and her allies. At every point in the diplomatic game of chess, Stalin had found himself outmanoeuvred by Hitler. Military weakness was compounded by diplomatic isolation.
Stalin remained greatly worried, too, that Britain would seek a deal with Hitler, ending the bogey of the two-front war and allowing Germany to turn eastwards unthreatened from the west. Britain’s military weakness, exposed by the withdrawal of 100,000 men from Greece when the Germans invaded, and in north Africa through Rommel’s startling successes, made the prospect seem a real one. None other than the British ambassador in Moscow, Sir Stafford Cripps, now alerted Stalin and Molotov to precisely such a scenario. ‘It was not outside the bounds of possibility, if the war were protracted for a long period,’ stated Cripps on 18 April, ‘that there might be a temptation for Great Britain (and especially for certain circles in Great Britain) to come to some arrangement to end the war on the sort of basis which has recently been suggested in certain German quarters.’100 The British government was at the time trying to induce the Soviet Union to throw her military might behind the defence of Yugoslavia and Greece to form a ‘Balkan front’ against Hitler. Stressing the mounting threat posed by Germany to the USSR itself was part of this diplomatic offensive. Instead, however, what Cripps succeeded in doing was to alarm the Soviet leadership about the likelihood of an ‘arrangement’ between Germany and Great Britain. When Winston Churchill then sent a message via Cripps to Stalin, delivered in the Kremlin on 21 April, warning the Soviet leader of the danger of a German attack, the impact was wholly counterproductive. All the message did was to set the alarm bells ringing even more loudly and intensify Stalin’s paranoia. He presumed that Churchill was trying to entice him into a war with Germany in a move aimed at serving only British interests. ‘Look at that,’ he told Zhukov, ‘we are being threatened with the Germans, and the Germans with the Soviet Union, and they are playing us off against one another. It is a subtle political game.’101
Churchill later described Stalin and his associates in the Kremlin as ‘simpletons’ and ‘the most completely outwitted bunglers of the Second World War’, and thought that, through direct contact with the Soviet chief, he might have prevented the disaster that befell his country on 22 June 1941.102 Even belatedly, Churchill did not see how his well-intended message would inevitably be construed in Moscow. In the context, Stalin’s reaction was not wholly irrational. In any case, by the time Churchill sent his warning Stalin was inundated with intelligence reports informing him of the growing threat from Germany.
With so many Communist sympathizers abroad, Stalin’s regime had no shortage of informers willing, often at considerable risk to their own safety, to provide the state security organs with a flow of intelligence–varied in quality, often contradictory, but sometimes significant.103 Digests of reports were forwarded at frequent intervals by Vsevolod Merkulov, head of the NKGB (responsible for external affairs, and hived off in early February 1941 from Beria’s NKVD, left in charge of internal security).104 Despite approving Merkulov’s appointment, Stalin had no high opinion of him, regarding him as weak and over-anxious to please. The flaw was, of course, built into the system. But perhaps the fact that Merkulov wrote plays and fiction in his spare time did not help.105 At any rate, Stalin distrusted his reports. Nor did he think he could rely upon the military intelligence reports, again sometimes summarizing important information, sent to him by the head of the GRU (the Soviet military intelligence), General Filip Golikov. Still further intelligence reports reached Stalin via the Foreign Ministry’s sources.106 Once more, they were treated with scepticism. Vital intelligence, for which agents had often risked their lives, was consequently dismissed as a matter of course by Stalin as ‘disinformation’. In fact, there was a good deal of disinformation deliberately put in circulation. Much of it was successfully placed by the Germans themselves (such as the story that the build-up of troops in the east was a deception aimed at British intelligence, a cover for the planned invasion of Britain).107 So there was certainly room for distrust and scepticism of uncorroborated intelligence. But Stalin’s own profound cynicism went much further than healthy scepticism. It led him to disbelieve all information, however compelling and however well placed the source, which contradicted his own analysis of German intentions. And this, perversely, came to rest upon the successful German deception that any attack would be preceded by an ultimatum, which would give him time to concede, mobilize or even pre-empt.108 The complete mistrust of all intelligence coupled with the certainty that his own analysis was right amounted ultimately to the reason why Stalin was caught so totally by surprise on 22 June 1941.
As early as 5 December 1940, the newly appointed Soviet ambassador to Germany, Vladimir Dekanozov, a former senior officer in the NKVD, received an anonymous letter warning that Hitler would attack the Soviet Union the following spring.109 This was indeed at precisely the point that Hitler was confirming to his military leaders the decision to prepare to invade the USSR in May 1941, embodied in the directive for what was now called ‘Operation Barbarossa’ on 18 December. Within eleven days, Soviet military intelligence in Berlin was forwarding to Moscow the information it had received from ‘most well-informed high military circles that Hitler has given the order to prepare for war with the USSR. War will be declared in March 1941.’ Verification of the information was sent to Stalin personally in early January 1941.110
Two of the best-pla
ced agents, supplying a flow of excellent information, were the German Communist sympathizers Harro Schulze-Boysen (whose codename was ‘Starshina’, or ‘the Elder’) and Arvid Harnack (known as ‘Korsicanets’, or the ‘Corsican’). Through family connections (his father was a nephew of Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz, the former head of the German navy, and his mother was related to Hermann Göring), Schulze-Boysen was able to join Luftwaffe headquarters in 1941 as an officer. There he gained access to top-secret material. Harnack, a lawyer who had studied for some time in the United States, was a nephew of Adolf von Harnack, an eminent theologian, and since 1935 had worked in the Economics Ministry in Berlin. Like Schulze-Boysen (with whom he came into contact after the outbreak of war), he had access to privileged information. Both were won over in 1940 to work secretly for Soviet intelligence. They were eventually uncovered and executed in 1942. But in 1941, as German preparations to attack the USSR were under way, they were able to tap sources close to the heart of Nazi military and economic planning.
At the beginning of March 1941, ‘Corsican’ reported serious discussions within the German leadership about attacking the USSR. His report was passed to Stalin, Molotov, Timoshenko and Beria. Contingency plans for occupation of the western parts of the Soviet Union were being drawn up, he indicated. And he relayed reports that General Franz Halder, chief of the German army’s General Staff, thought the occupation of the Ukraine and the Caucasus would be easy, and pay rich dividends, information which fitted the Soviet presumption that any strike would have its main thrust in the south.111 A further report, sent on to the Soviet leadership two days later, pointed out that the build-up of troops on the Soviet border was now so large that it was quite evidently an invasion force. However, this report suggested that the USSR would be attacked only following an assault on Turkey; moreover, that Ribbentrop and even Hitler thought Germany would gain more economically by retaining trade links with the Soviet Union than by invasion and occupation. Notions in the Soviet leadership that there might be a split in the upper echelons of the Nazi regime, and even that Hitler might not belong to the most aggressive faction in the matter of designs on the Soviet Union, were thereby given some support.112
A few days later, yet another report from ‘Corsican’ found its way to Stalin’s desk. This mentioned German spy planes photographing Soviet territory, particularly around the naval base of Kronstadt, near Leningrad. It also relayed second-hand information from two German generals that an attack on the USSR was planned for the spring. German High Command, it was said, thought Soviet forces would be defeated after little more than a week. The occupation of the Ukraine–again the focus on the Soviet ‘granary’–would deprive the USSR of its main source of food. The Wehrmacht would rapidly advance eastwards, and within twenty-five days would be beyond the Urals.113 Towards the end of March, ‘Corsican’ passed on information from the German Ministry of Air, detailing planning for the bombing of communications in the USSR, aerial reconnaissance of Soviet towns and the expectation among Luftwaffe officers that operations would begin in late April or early May. An important consideration, it was said, was the German aim of taking the crops before retreating Soviet forces had time to destroy them.114
In April the volume of reports intensified. Precise details were given of the build-up of German forces along the border, troop movements and construction of fortifications and aerodromes.115 ‘The Elder’ (‘Starshina’) reported remarks of an officer who had contact with Göring that Hitler considered it necessary to launch a preventive war against the USSR. A point followed which was lodged in the minds of Stalin and other Soviet leaders. Before war was declared, Germany would issue an ultimatum that the Soviet Union join the Tripartite Pact and submit to German demands–predominantly ruthless economic exploitation and political subordination, it was presumed. The attack would follow if the USSR refused to comply with the ultimatum.116 A few days later, ‘Starshina’ was relaying information that most German officers were opposed to Hitler and did not support the idea of attacking the USSR. He thought the opportunity for a decisive blow by the Wehrmacht was fading.117
By the end of the month, ‘Corsican’, following a secret meeting of leading German officials in the Economics Ministry, again laid the emphasis on the demands for supplies of raw materials from the Soviet Union, to be achieved either by peace or by war.118 And on 6 May a communication from another extremely well-informed source, Richard Sorge (known as ‘Ramzai’), a Soviet spy located in the German embassy in Tokyo, noted that, according to the German ambassador, General Eugen Ott, Hitler was determined to defeat the USSR and gain the economic resources of the western parts of the Soviet Union. Once the grain had been sown, Germany could attack at any time to reap the harvest. German generals, in Ott’s view, believed that an eastern campaign would prove no hindrance to the war against Britain. The Soviet forces, they thought, were unprepared, defences weak, and the Red Army could be routed within a matter of weeks.119 These, and countless other agents’ reports, were routinely summarized by Merkulov, head of external security, and the digests sent on to the Soviet leadership.120
In retrospect, ignoring such information seems sheer folly. Leaving aside the hearsay nature of much of it, that it was not always consistent and that it did not match the actual pattern of the invasion, it did point unequivocally to a German attack on the Soviet Union–and in the near future. From Stalin’s perspective, however, it was less obvious. The reports just cited were only part of an increasing flow of information, starting to turn into a torrent. But a good deal of it actually came through British, American or other foreign channels.121 This was instinctively distrusted by Stalin, as we have seen, and his distrust was encouraged by his own intelligence chiefs. On 20 March 1941 General Golikov, head of military intelligence, presented a report to the Defence and Foreign Commissariats and the Central Committee which outlined a long list of various views from an array of sources on German intentions towards the USSR. He preceded this by stating that much of the agent information about a spring attack on the Soviet Union came from Anglo-American sources, whose main aim was to worsen the relationship between Germany and the USSR. His own view was that the Germans would attack the Soviet Union only once they had defeated Britain. Persistent rumours that the attack would occur in the spring of 1941, he suggested, ought to be viewed as disinformation spread by the British, and also the German, intelligence services.122 This was no more than pandering to Stalin’s preformed judgement.
Stalin and his associates were not alone, however, in misreading the signals. Foreign intelligence services were also for the most part misled.123 German deception strategy–that the build-up of troops in the east was a front for ‘Operation Sealion’ (the invasion of England), or was to culminate in an ultimatum to Stalin to demand territory and raw materials from the Soviet Union–played a notable part in this.124 British intelligence, sometimes swallowing the false messages deliberately put into circulation by the Germans, was late in coming to the realization that an invasion was indeed being planned. Early reports on Hitler’s intended aggression were dismissed as unreliable rumour, wishful thinking or defensive moves against possible Soviet attack. Then it was seen as a ‘war of nerves’ by the Germans to prevent intervention in the Balkans or to extricate more material resources from the Soviet Union.125
Reading the intelligence runes was, therefore, anything but straightforward. Molotov was still unrepentant many years later on the allegation that Stalin’s cardinal error was to ignore the intelligence he was receiving. ‘We are blamed because we ignored our intelligence,’ said Molotov. ‘Yes, they warned us. But if we had heeded them, had given Hitler the slightest excuse, he would have attacked us earlier.’ (When that might have been, Molotov did not indicate. Since, as was obvious, the Germans had been in no position to attack during the summer months of 1940, and the Russian winter ruled out any such move during subsequent months, the earliest date of any invasion had to be spring 1941–when, indeed, Hitler initially intended to launch
it.) ‘We knew the war was coming soon, that we were weaker than Germany, that we would have to retreat,’ Molotov continued. ‘We did everything to postpone the war…Stalin reckoned before the war that only in 1943 would we be able to meet the Germans as equals.’ His interrogator brought Molotov back to the stream of intelligence reports. ‘We could not have relied on our intelligence,’ Molotov replied. ‘You have to listen to them, but you also have to verify their information. Intelligence agents could push you into such a dangerous position that you would never get out of it. Provocateurs everywhere are innumerable…You couldn’t trust such reports.’126 Molotov’s views were an echo of Stalin’s own.
By the beginning of May, nevertheless, the flood of worrying information could no longer be simply ignored. Even Stalin saw that some action was necessary. It was primarily aimed at sending a message to Germany, providing public reassurance and bolstering troop morale. At the same time Timoshenko and Zhukov were viewing the warnings with more anxious eyes than Stalin’s. They were by now favouring a different sort of action. They were at work on a drastically revised military plan–one which placed the emphasis on a Soviet offensive.
VI
